Kiwi Josh keen to get into gear at NZ Open

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INTO GEAR: Kiwi golfer Josh Geary has a liking for The Hills course, which hosts the NZ Open.

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For a young golfer with a thin career CV, Josh Geary has much to recommend him at the New Zealand Open this week.

Geary boasts a fine track record at The Hills on the outskirts of Arrowtown, which is hosting the $US600,000 ($NZ845,082) Nationwide Tour co-sanctioned championship for the third time starting on Thursday.

The 25-year-old professional finished in a share of 12th place at the first event here in 2007 and improved to a tie for fourth last year.

Almost 12 months on, Geary is his normally confident self heading into the opening event on the Nationwide Tour schedule, which next week takes in the Moonah Classic near Melbourne before heading back to its north American roots.

"I like the layout of this course and I normally play well here so they are good signs for this week," the Tauranga product said today after taking in 12 holes of practice.

"It (course) looks really lush this year, it's very green and defined and the fairways look fantastic while the greens are in tip top shape."

The Open marks Geary's second start using a new ball and set of clubs. He unveiled his new equipment last week in Christchurch where he posted successive rounds of 75 to miss the cut at the New Zealand PGA Championship.

He is eager to put the equipment to work here after a largely frustrating 2009 bookended by strong performances in New Zealand and Australia and a long, barren patch in between.

He finished second in the New Zealand PGA a week before his Open top-five return then ended the calendar year by coming seventh equal at the Australian PGA Championship.

These three results made up the bulk of his Australasian earnings, which topped $A150,000 ($NZ187,338) to leave him fourth on that tour's order of merit.

That in turn has earned him starts on the breakaway OneAsia circuit in 2010, and he intends playing at least eight of the 10 tournaments confirmed on that tour and complementing them with appearances on the Canadian Tour, where he has played since 2007.

The high moneylist placing has also guaranteed him a start in the third and final stage of qualifying for the PGA Tour in the United States at the end of the year.

That has all convinced him to bypass attempting to earn starts on the Nationwide Tour in the US via Monday qualifiers, a route he was forced to take despite banking close to $US70,000

from his two tour appearances in Queenstown and Christchurch a year ago.

Geary found 2009 a trying year simply due to his restricted starts.

"I only played 12-13 four-round tournaments for the whole year. It was very quiet, especially when I played four-five of them in the first three months.

"It was kind of frustrating to make such a great start then have no more starts.

"It's hard teeing it up after not playing for two-three months. You can't get a momentum going that you can when you are playing regularly.

"Too much qualifying doesn't do much for your game. The lack of play showed in some events when I came back fresh and missed a few cuts because I didn't have enough tournament golf behind me."

Despite wanting regular matchplay to hone his skills, Geary is happy enough with the state of his game and buoyed by the prospects of playing in Asia, where the OneAsia circuit has confirmed 10 tournaments for the season, all carrying minimum prizemoney of $US 1 million.

"They will all be good gap fillers for the year before I get ready for the final stage (of PGA Tour qualifying)."

The OneAsia schedule starts with the Luxehills Championship at Chengdu on April 1-4, the first of four events in China.

Three events have been pencilled in for South Korea, two in Australia and one in Thailand, but breaking into other markets in Asia, where the Asian Tour has a stranglehold, is proving difficult for OneAsia officials.